Everyone is running as an outsider in the Democratic primary to replace the late Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, speaking to the appetite for change within the party.
Grijalva, who died in March, always positioned himself as an outsider in Democratic politics throughout his 11 terms in Congress. In 2015, he was the first Democrat in Congress to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 presidential primary, and in Congress he was known as a principled environmentalist and advocate for Indigenous communities.
The two leading candidates vying to become his successor in Arizona’s 7th district also see an outsider campaign as the path to victory, with both Grijalva’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, and activist Deja Foxx positioning themselves as anti-establishment. Both are competing in the July 15 Democratic primary, the winner of which will take part in a special election set for Sept. 23.
Adelita Grijalva, 54, has leaned on her experience in the district, serving for 20 years on the Tucson Unified School District board and, since 2021, on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. She has also picked up the endorsement of national progressive figures, like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Foxx, 25, has positioned herself as representing a new generation of politics. Before running for Congress, Foxx worked on former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, advocated for women’s reproductive rights, and spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. She has garnered the support of one-time Vice DNC chair David Hogg, who decided not to run again, after the party voted to redo the vice chair election on a technicality. The decision capped off a months-long fight within the party, after promising to support primary challengers to Democrats he described as “asleep at the wheel.”
Daniel Hernandez, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, Jose Malvido Jr., an Indigenous activist, and Patrick Harris, Sr., a retired health care executive, are also running in the primary.
In what little polling has been done on the race, however, Grijalva and Foxx have dominated the field. A Change Research survey from late June found that Grijalva led the field with 43% support while Foxx came in second with 35%. Hernandez was a distant third at 9%.
Thomas Volgy, a political scientist at the University of Arizona and the former mayor of Tucson, told Salon that “neither one of these are really establishment candidates in any sense.” Volgy added that the two are running on similar platforms and that, in large part, the decision in the district is coming “down to the tradeoff between Grijalva’s experience and Foxx’s youth.”
Both have centered standing up to Trump, expanding Medicare and Medicaid, supporting investments in housing and raising the Social Security payroll tax cap.
In an interview with Salon earlier this year, Foxx pitched herself as a break from the usual, saying “that if you feel like the way things have been going isn’t working, if you’re unhappy with the state of this country as it stands, then we’re going to need to do things differently, and I’m the candidate to do it.”
“The way we have been doing things isn’t working, and I am the only break from the status quo in this race,” Foxx added.
Grijalva has made a similar pitch, while promising to continue her father’s legacy in Congress.
“I know how to fight because I learned from the best,” Grijalva said in one of her ads. “My parents named me Adelita — it means fighter — and they taught me what that really means. It’s about standing up for the people who raised you, taught you, stood by you. You fight for people. You fight for community. And you never back down — especially when the stakes are this high.”
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One thing that has shaken up the race in the final stretch is a string of mailers, digital ads and phone calls by an apparently pro-Foxx committee that has been created and dropped more than $113,000 into the race in just the last month.
“Our democracy is under attack. We need a leader to fight back against Trump. That’s not Adelita Grijalva. After closing schools and firing teachers, she even blocked oversight and illegally banned critics from meetings. We can’t trust Adelita Grijalva,” said the speaker in one digital ad paid for by the group.
According to Volgy, the mention of Grijalva allegedly banning critics from meetings refers to an incident in which one person would repeatedly attend school board meetings and accuse the one gay school board member of being a pedophile.
“Adelita, who was chairing the board, finally said, ‘That’s enough,’” Volgy said. “It’s pretty well known what played out there. To use that as a sort of smear, an attack on Adelita, I think has really backfired.”
The group, Tucson Families Fed Up PAC, is so new that, at the time of writing, the FEC had not yet had time to process their filings. According to the raw filings available, the group has spent all of its money on a Washington, DC-based firm named Pinwheel Productions.
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Volgy said that these ads may have had a “jarring effect” on voters in the district, who he said are not used to that sort of messaging in a congressional primary, having been represented by Raúl Grijalva for some 22 years.
At times, the attacks in the campaign have become personal, with candidates differentiating themselves based on their biography as much as their platforms. Both have responded to jabs from outside groups, with Grijalva being accused of running on her family name.
“I also want to address this idea of me being a so-called ‘legacy candidate.’ If legacy means fighting for the most vulnerable, standing up to corporate greed, defending immigrants and working families and advancing environmental justice and tribal sovereignty, then yes. I am a progressive and those are the values I fought for and the legacy I’m proud to carry forward,” Grijalva said in an Instagram post. “I am not a Rockefeller. I’m a Grijalva from the south side of Tucson. I’m not in this for fame, sponsorships, or likes.”
Foxx, in turn, has spent significant time responding to concerns about her age and experience.
“I think about how some people have criticized me for not having the right kind of experience, never having run for state or local office, never having held a position at the state [legislature] or school board. But it’s worth pointing out that our school boards are unpaid. Our state legislators, they make $24,000 a year … If we make underpaid and unpaid labor a prerequisite to leadership, we are going to continue to be in a deficit of representation when it comes to age and economics,” Foxx told Salon.
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